No, he seems to believe that on Election Day they gave him the keys to an ideological candy store, thus allowing him to run around in pursuit of whatever addle-brained treat his untiringly ambitious appetite desires.
That may explain why Beckwith pulled together what he’s called his “Anti-Woke Advisory Committee,” a group that aims to use taxpayer dollars and other resources to indoctrinate Indiana public school students and sow partisan confusion throughout the Hoosier heartland.
Thanks to some superb reporting by Sydney Byerly of The Indiana Citizen, which can be found here, we know that the lieutenant governor assembled a cast of right-wing cranks so far out there that they’re beyond parody.
(Disclosures: The Indiana Citizen and TheStatehouseFile.com are partners and Byerly is a former student of mine.)
That cast includes former Indiana Attorney General (and serial sine die party groper) Curtis Hill, Indiana Rep. Craig Haggard, R-Mooresville, Morgan County flat-earth conservative Jay Hart and the Indiana Family Institute’s Ryan McCann and Martin Strother.
And, of course, Beckwith himself, who now presides over a lieutenant governor’s office that is about as organized and efficient as a Marx Brothers comedy.
If the goal of bringing this group together was to demonstrate that, within a certain context, even Genghis Khan could be considered reasonable and moderate, well, then, mission accomplished, Mr. Lieutenant Governor.
Otherwise, it seems like a possible violation of several laws and nothing more than a gathering of deluded fringe figures who somehow think the world is just waiting—no, panting with eagerness—to embrace their whack-a-doodle notions.
Consider this.
Beckwith and his brain trust apparently have located the epicenter of “wokeness”—whatever that might be—in the world.
It isn’t in Greenwich Village in New York City. Nor can it be found on Haight Street in San Francisco. One wouldn’t even be able to identify it on Paris’ famed Left Bank.
Nope, ground zero for “wokeness”—again, Beckwith and his deep thinkers aren’t big on defining terms—apparently is in the Center Grove school system here in Indiana.
That’s right.
A suburban school district on the southwest side of Indianapolis—one that experienced explosive growth when conservatives fled the city during the days of desegregation—is more Avant Garde than the Berkeley campus in the late 1960s.
Who knew that so many hipsters and revolutionaries were hiding themselves in the cul de sacs and manicured lawns of some of Indiana’s most carefully planned communities? Who also knew that these “woke”—again, Beckwith and his crew of resident geniuses don’t let themselves get bogged down with facts and definitions—suburban secret agents would be devious and clever enough to keep sending Republicans to the Indiana House of Representatives, the Indiana Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives as a brilliant cover for their real agenda?
I know that I will never look at the Center Grove schools, which have sent me some of my brightest and most conservative students over the years, the same way again.
I never would have pegged Beckwith as a Richard Pryor fan, but, when it comes to the Center Grove schools, the Indiana lieutenant governor is echoing the late comic’s epic rejoinder—“who you gonna trust, me, or your own lyin’ eyes?”
There is something so divorced from reality about Beckwith’s merry band of delusionists that they defy both description and comprehension.
I mean, on what plane of reality does someone like Curtis Hill—who had his license to practice law suspended because he couldn’t keep his hands off female legislative staffers young enough to be his daughter at an end-of-session party—think he has the moral standing to lecture anyone else on codes of conduct?
Then there’s Beckwith, who has yet to demonstrate that he can run anything larger than his own mouth.
He foisted himself onto the Republican ticket with Gov. Mike Braun through political skullduggery, then rode Braun’s wealth into office.
Since then, he’s acted as if he were accountable to no one.
Not Braun.
Not the people of Indiana.
Not even the state’s constitution, which grants the office of lieutenant governor slight influence over Hoosiers’ lives.
Maybe a little more education would help him grow into his responsibilities as an elected official.
Perhaps Center Grove could teach him a thing or two.
